Trouble in seaside paradise as the tourists take over

Villagers are tired of tourists clogging their streets and relieving themselves in their gardens. Photo / Getty Images

Their pastel-coloured houses and tiny fishing harbours make them one of Italy's most popular destinations, but a string of picturesque fishing villages known as the Cinque Terre fear they are being suffocated by mass tourism.

The opening of a new cruise ship terminal at the nearby port of La Spezia has increased by around 30 per cent the number of day-trippers who swarm through the villages, crowding narrow alleyways and overwhelming local services.

The new terminal has led to a dramatic rise in the number of cruise ship passengers arriving, from 470,000 last year to a projected total this year of 645,000, according to port authority figures.

Every time a liner docks in La Spezia it disgorges thousands of passengers on to coaches destined for the picture-postcard villages of Manarola, Vernazza, Corniglia, Riomaggiore and Monterosso.

The inhabitants of the Cinque Terre, which literally translates as the Five Lands, say the huge numbers of visitors threaten to ruin the very thing they have come to see.

They have launched an online petition, Save the Cinque Terre from Mass Tourism, calling for the number of visitors to the World Heritage area to be managed better.

One of the hundreds of people who have signed the petition, which was launched a few days ago, wrote: "They were once a paradise but now they have become hell."

The petition organisers wrote that "the Cinque Terre has boomed in popularity among international travellers and is suffering the consequences of unsustainable - and unrestricted - mass tourism".

Visitors arrive not only by bus but also by train - the villages are served by a railway line that winds in and out of tunnels carved through the steep cliffs.

There are few public toilets in the Cinque Terre villages and local inhabitants complain of tourists urinating " or worse " in their back gardens and in doorways.

"We want to stagger the arrival of tour buses so that they don't all arrive at the same time," said Franca Cantrigliani, the Mayor of Riomaggiore, one of the five villages. "The responsibility for that lies with the port authority of La Spezia and the cruise ship companies."

The cruise industry said it was "saddened" to hear that the inhabitants of the Cinque Terre felt overwhelmed by the numbers.

Francesco Galietti, the national director of the Italian chapter of the Cruise Lines International Association, said the cruise sector in Italy had created more than 100,000 jobs and generated revenue of more than 4.5 billion ($7.9 billion) last year.